Review: The Afterparty “Zoe”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

This week’s episode of The Afterparty is a live-action/animated hybrid that features the re-telling of what exactly Zoe was doing on the night Xavier was murdered with Detective Danner asking questions. Despite suffering from multiple personalities, having a couple of motives, and possibly suffering from depression due to her recent divorce, it appears Zoe is in the clear, however, Detective Danner is taken off of the case after Detective Culp discovers that the deposition wad being tapped.

Our Take

The Shadowmachine-produced episode comes from Lindsey Olivares and right off the bat with this being a Lord Miller Production, the obvious artistic influences of the producers’ Clone High are all over the place. With everyone and their father doing “whodunnit” movies and TV series thanks to the popularity of Knives Out, animation is a great way for Lord Miller to differentiate themselves from the pack. The Phil Lord & Rachel Smith-written episode isn’t just an animated episode to have an animated episode. Instead, the episode appears to be scripted like an animated series with all of the sight gags to go along with it.

Animation is a perfect medium to encapsulate someone like “Zoe” who clearly has a lot going on in her ‘noggin. We get to see someone’s internal feelings as she reacts to love, heartbreak, lust, in an almost sequential fashion all-the-while the murder mystery continues to unfurl and bring with it it’s own fruits. As for the actual production of the episode, the animation looks quick and dirty, which I like and is a perfect complement for the series, but I did notice some audio issues, more specifically in Ayden Mayeri’s lines where it very clearly sounds like she’s been recorded on a Zoom meeting not properly equipped for @home production. If she WAS, then there must have been a post production slip because she very much sounds like she’s coming through in a Pringles can.

In any event, The Afterparty’s animated episode is mostly done the correct way, and with the show’s stellar cast like Tiffany Haddish, Ben Schwartz, Ike Barinholtz, Ilana Glazer, Dave Franco, Sam Richardson, and most notably this week, Zoe Chao, holding this thing together like an All-American team, the finish looks like it’s gonna be a doozy.